In my previous post about Apple’s new subscription plans for the App Store, I offered up three possibilities. With the move, Apple is either: brilliant, brazen, or batsh*t crazy. But reading over the comments on that post (admit it, you did — it’s okay, I do too, sometimes), you might think there was a fourth option: evil.
To those who have followed tech news for any extended length of time, this is a familiar refrain. Company X changes something, therefore Company X is “evil”. Over the years, this has been true of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, etc. But no company has seen this vitriol to the extent of Apple over the past few years. And curiously, it seems correlated to their meteoric rise in power and profitability.
But if Apple is really evil — or at the very least, if several major moves they’ve made over the past few years have been evil — shouldn’t the opposite be true? Shouldn’t Apple be losing a ton of customers who are fed up with their cruelty and inhumane torture of developers, users, and the world in general? Makes sense, right? → Read More
We all knew it was coming, but the details of the App Store subscription model, which Apple outlined today, are fascinating on a number of levels. Simply put: this is one of the boldest bets Apple has ever made. And it could backfire. Or it could be huge beyond belief. Either way, it’s going to be very controversial.
We’ve already gone over the basics, but as a quick recap: any service offering an app with any sort of subscription component must now offer it within the app using the new in-app subscription options. Those companies are welcome to offer subscriptions outside of the app as well, but they must also have to option to do it in-app and it must be for the same price (or cheaper) than the out-of-app option. If a subscriber signs up in-app, Apple keeps 30 percent of those revenues. If they sign up outside of the app (still granting them accesses to the app), the company keeps 100 percent of the revenues. → Read More
How big a business are mobile apps? In a new report, market research firm Gartner forecasts that global mobile app store revenues will triple from $5.2 billion last year to $15 billion in 2011, and keep growing to an astounding $58 billion by 2014. As with any forecast of a hypergrowth market, you can be sure this one will change in six months, and the further out you go the more guesswork involved. (Remember, less than a year ago nobody was even able to predict how many iPads would be sold this year). But here is one prediction you can count on: you will be hearing these numbers thrown around a lot all year long until a better forecast comes along.
Gartner breaks down the forecast into advertising revenues and paid downloads (including in-app purchases), as you can see from the chart above. Paid downloads and other direct purchases make up the majority of the expected revenues, but mobile advertising is expected to grow nicely over time into a multi-billion dollar market. → Read More
Apple and Twitter have had an interesting but cautious relationship over the past couple of years. Early on, the only official Apple accounts belonged to various iTunes properties, which utilized the service for promotions. Then Apple secured a deal with Twitter for Ping, their social network within iTunes. Then some Twitter executives starting joining in on the fun (though some more vocally then others). Now it appears that Apple is taking another step into official Twitter land today with an account for the App Store.
About an hour ago, the first tweet was sent from the account saying, “Welcome to App Store on Twitter! Follow us to discover new apps, get exclusive offers, and share with friends. #appstore“. Looking over the vitals, the account has about 3,000 followers at the moment, but is only following 5 users — all iTunes official accounts. And while the App Store account isn’t yet verified, Twitter has altered their practice of doing that, so we’ll have to take the fact that both iTunes TV and iTunes Music are following the account as a sign that it’s legit (we’ve also reached out to Twitter about it). → Read More
Here we are. Apple has announced on this promotion page that there have been 10 billion downloads from its App Store since its inception.
It’s a huge milestone in the life of the App Store, which lets people downloads games and software programs for their iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads. → Read More
Last night, we pointed out that as a part of their countdown to 10 billion app downloads, Apple actually revealed the top all-time app downloads for paid iPhone apps, free iPhone apps, paid iPad apps, and free iPad apps. The top results seemed pretty straightforward, with a few oddities here or there. And there may be a good reason for such oddities. The system appears pretty easy to game.
Well, technically, it’s probably not really “gaming” the system. At least not yet. It just appears that Apple is being a little sloppy in populating their lists. After speaking to a few top app developers, it seems that Apple is counting total download numbers in aggregate, regardless of if an app switched between being free and paid. → Read More
If you had to guess what the top downloaded iOS app of all time was, what would you say? You’ll probably get it. It’s an obvious one. It’s Facebook. Number two is fairly easy too: Pandora. But did you know that number three is the Google Mobile App? I wonder what Apple thinks of that?
As they countdown to 10 billion total app downloads, Apple has unveiled a page within the iTunes Store that shows the top app downloads of all time. These are broken into four categories: Top Free iPhone Apps, Top Paid iPhones Apps, Top Free iPad Apps, and Top Paid iPad Apps. → Read More
We all know mobile app stores are booming worldwide, and a new market research report by MarketsandMarkets acknowledges that trend. According to the research firm’s ‘World Mobile Applications Market (2010 – 2015)’ report, the total global mobile applications market is expected to be worth $25 billion by 2015 (up from about $6.8 billion in 2010).
MarketsandMarkets projects Apple’s App Store to hold nearly 20.5 percent of that particular cake, while the global market is forecast to record a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 29.6 percent from 2009 to 2014. → Read More
Holy crap; remember when the App Store surpassing 1 billion downloads was a nearly mind-blowing feat? Less than 2 years later, Apple is just a few million copies of Angry Birds away from cracking past 10 billion. As with the 1 billion download landmark, Apple’s going to give away a $10,000 giftcard to whoever nabs that 10 billionth download. Sadly, you won’t be getting the iPod Touch, Time Capsule, and MacBook Pro from the first round — but hey, ten thousand bucks never hurts. Unless you fire it at yourself from some sort of money cannon. Or try to punch your way through a stack of 10,000 ones. → Read More
Microsoft wants to call their app store an App Store, but Apple thinks different. The term, used by Apple for almost as long as the iPhone has been around, is a registered Apple trademark. Microsoft, on the other hand, finds the term “app store” to be completely generic and not subject to trademark control.
From the filing:
“Any secondary meaning or fame Apple has in ‘App Store’ is de facto secondary meaning that cannot convert the generic term ‘app store’ into a protectable trademark,” write lawyers for Microsoft in a motion for summary judgment, filed yesterday with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. “Apple cannot block competitors from using a generic name. ‘App store’ is generic and therefore in the public domain and free for all competitors to use.”
If you’re as chained to Apple products as we are, you probably spent a couple hours this morning exploring the nascent Mac App Store or as I like to call it, the Productivity Toilet. And you are not alone, hours after launch some industrious (and foul mouthed) UI enthusiast has created “Read the fucking HIG,” a Tumblr compilation of terribly designed Mac Apps.
While we found it on Twitter of course, we hear this has been making the rounds at Apple all afternoon, “I can’t stop laughing. Every post is quotable” one employee told us. True. → Read More
Last year, the world went app crazy. If anything, 2010 was the year of the mobile App Store—not only for Apple, but also for Android, Blackberry, and even Nokia. App store analytics firm Distimo has a new report looking at Great Mobile App Store Boom of 2010. While Apple ended the year with roughly 300,000 apps in iTunes, the Android Market grew to about 130,000, while Nokia’s Ovi Store got to 25,000 apps and BlackBerry App World reached 18,000. The number of apps in iTunes doubled, but the smaller app stores grew even faster, with the number of Android apps up 544 percent, Blackberry apps up 268 percent, and Nokia apps up 258 percent.
Angry Birds is the most popular app across all mobile platforms, while Facebook is the most popular non-game app. Distimo also found that the categories with the strongest growth on the iPhone were serious business apps (up 186 percent) and medical apps (up 156 percent), whereas the fastest-growing categories on Android were more frivolous: comics (up 802 percent), card and casino games (up 644 percent), and entertainment (up 589 percent). Go figure. → Read More
The iTunes App Store is huge. 300,000 apps huge. I’ve watched this monster start from nothing and turn into a billion-dollar industry in only a few short years. We’ve been approaching this point for some time now, but it’s more apparent than ever that app exposure is of critical importance. A healthy majority of iOS app users discover new applications directly from their device as opposed to using iTunes. If you look specifically at the iPhone, the amount of real estate for discovery is only available to a very small percentage of the total apps.
There are currently 20 overall categories, with Games offering an additional 20 subcategories. Each subcategory is broken into three lists and displays a max of 100 apps on the iPhone. Throw in a small number from the Top 25 and Featured lists and you wind up with roughly 12,000 apps being shown at one time. This works out to only about 4% of all apps that receive visibility. One can browse beyond this number on iTunes, but that quickly becomes an overwhelming, laborious task. → Read More
According to rumor, Apple is planning to launch the Mac App Store on Monday, December 13 – next week, to be exact – and developers are apparently being prepped to have their products ready for the story by today. The source said that “delays could always happen” but there are plans to release the store before Christmas. → Read More
As Apple CEO Steve Jobs like to point out, the Android Market is great for users who want to find porn. While that may not be exactly true, other Android-based stores are trying to make it true. And perhaps perception was getting too close to reality, as today, Google has announced that in the next few weeks, they’ll be showing content ratings for all apps listed in the Market.
While Android has previously had a content rating policy, prior to this, these ratings were not surfaced to users. Nor does it seem like they were strictly enforced. As a result, it was difficult to distinguish an app with mature content from those that were meant for kids. Now, all apps in the Market will be required to show one of four content rating levels: All, Pre-teen, Teen, & Mature, Google’s Eric Chu writes today. → Read More
The past few days haven’t been too great for anyone who decided to launch an iPhone app right before Halloween. Why? Because no matter how many thousands of downloads their fresh-faced app might have received, it wasn’t going anywhere near the oh-so-coveted US Top 10 list.
For reasons unclear right now, the rankings system for the US App Store has been locked in stone for the past four days. → Read More
Is there really any doubt the Mac App Store will be anything other than a huge hit when it debuts in 90 days? Seven billion downloads on the current App Store would suggest that Apple knows what it’s doing (and that people really love to slingshot cartoon birds into buildings). And the benefits of the App Store are clear: it’s an easy-to-use, one-stop source of safe, tested software. Usually. Maybe not all of that software is worth your time—how many fart Apps do you really need?—but the platform itself is sound, and Apple is keen to make sure it stays that way. But the platform is closed. Only with Apple’s approval (not to mention its 30 percent cut of the action) can your App find a home on the App Store. But is that scenario ideal when it comes to desktop operating systems? → Read More
Exclusive -When Jason tried out online music streaming startup Grooveshark’s iPhone app in July 2009, he wrote that it was great but that he “wouldn’t expect this to pop up in the App Store any time soon”. He was right, and last February the company got so fed up with waiting for Apple that they released the app for jailbroken iPhones on third-party application store Cydia.
But last August, Apple suddenly changed its tune and approved Grooveshark for iPhone, which hit the App Store soon after. But less than a week later, Apple received a complaint from Universal Music Group UK about the app, prompting Cupertino to yank it off the store. → Read More
Listening to voicemails is a huge waste of time. That’s why apps that transcribe your voicemail to text are a godsend. The new Yap Voicemail app is now available for the iPhone. You route your voicemails through Yap. It transcribes them for you using only speech-to-text technology (no humans), which allows it to offer the service for free (with ads at the bottom).
The transcriptions are not perfect—it mistook “Leena” for “Nina” and “drafts” for “trust” in one message, but Yap gets enough of the words right to figure out what the message is about. And you can always play the message in the app to listen to exactly what was said. Every time you get a message, a notification pops up with the name of the caller and the beginning of the message. Since it is completely automated, the message appears almost immediately after it is left on your voicemail, just like a text message. You can respond via email, SMS, or a phone call right from the app. → Read More
Back in January, we started to hear noise about an Intel AppStore, and people in general scoffed. Another app store? That’s the last thing we need! Well, Intel is moving forward with theirs, and it’s got some serious firepower backing it up. → Read More
